Graphics applications often require a complete surface model for rendering and animation. Obtaining a complete model of a particular person is often difficult or impossible. Even when the person can be constrained to remain motionless inside of a Cyberware full body scanner, incomplete surface data is obtained due to occlusions. When the task is to obtain a 3D sequence of the person in motion, the situation can be even more difficult. Existing marker-based motion capture systems usually provide only sparse measurements at a small number of points on the surface. The desire is to map such sparse data into a fully animated 3D surface model. The invention described herein advances the art by providing new exciting methods for shape completion and animation that overcomes at least some of the current shortcomings.